He was one step away from the cement when an infected lunged.
With an exclamation, Arthur grabbed the strap of his friend’s duffel and jerked him back. Dalton’s heels scrabbled at the ground as the attacker somersaulted onto the pavement. Covered in dirt, it tangled its fingers in the grass and craned its neck to snarl at the towhead. Charlotte put a bullet through it before Dalton had a chance to bring his staff around.
“Where did that even come from?” Dalton got back to his feet and, leaning on his staff, shook out his knee.
“Around the side of this, I suppose.” Arthur investigated the rusty, tireless truck near the door. “It looks like he could have dug his way up just a moment ago, the way the dirt is thrown about back here.”
Charlotte huffed, hunching her shoulders. “Don’t say things like that. They’re victims of a disease, not zombies.”
“I mean, I’ve seen them come out of the ground.” Arthur blinked. “Although I may not be the most credible witness.”
“Stop.” She crossed her arms. “Dead people rising isn’t the kind of thing to joke about. We’re done with this topic.”
He leaned away from her unconsciously. “Um, okay. S-sorry.”
With a nod, she widened her stance. “Let’s get Dalton inside before something else tries to bite him.”
“Thanks,” Dalton said, although he looked to Arthur first. Swallowing, Dalton stepped to the door and knocked before entering.
“Hello?” He cast a glance back. “She might be at Gramps’ house right now.”
It was dark inside, so he put both hands on his staff before taking another step in. “Frankie? It’s your br—”
A scream interrupted him, and he barely had time to get his weapon out of the way before he was tackled.
“You’re choking me! Frankie. You’re choking me.”
“Of course I am!” Rosalind laughed. “You’re alive!”
“Not for long, at this rate,” he wheezed.
She pulled back, looked Dalton over, and took a step to the side. “Fine, fine. Wimp.” She grinned. “You doing okay, then?”
He coughed, adjusting his rumpled shirt. This got a laugh from Charlotte, who stepped forward.
“He’s been fine, yes. You?”
Rosalind nodded, leaning against the doorframe. “A little bored without a brother to push around—” She narrowed her eyes at Dalton, who was making a cutting motion at his neck. After another glance at the party, she folded her arms and looked to the side. “Yeah, I’ve been fine, thanks. Um—” she turned back to Charlotte “—it’s still a while to dinner, but do you want to eat together again? I can whip something up, no trouble.”
“No, thanks.” She scratched the back of her head. “I’ve already been away from home long enough. Although, if you want to come to Killeen with us…”
Rosalind blinked. “Would they take us?”
“Of course! They’ll put you to work, but I doubt you’re lounging around all the time, anyway, right?”
“True enough.” She looked at her brother. “Dalton?”
He sucked in a breath. “It does sound like a good idea. But what are the odds we can get Gramps out of his house to join us?”
“Ooh.” She bit her lip. “Yeah, it would be harder to come visit him if we’re out there.”
“And then there’s Jor—” He glanced at Arthur and stopped. “Uh… Char’. How about we get things worked out here and join you there later?”
Charlotte smiled. “As long as you join us there. Arthur? Think you could stand parting with him for a while?”
“Could I!” Arthur exclaimed with exaggerated joy. “But, er, yes. I suppose I’ll be seeing you, then.”
“Not with that attitude.” Dalton waggled the end of his staff in front of Arthur’s nose before withdrawing it. “Really, though—I’ll see you later.” He then nodded at Charlotte to indicate the statement applied to her, too.
She nodded back before throwing her arms around his shoulders. “Thank you so much, for everything you’ve done. It’s hard to say how much it meant to both of us, but thank you. If you ever need a favor, hit me up, okay?” She pulled back, letting her arms drop to her sides.
Arthur nodded. “You’ve done too much for me to never repay you—if, in fact, I can. All the help with the dates and things—hardly mentioning keeping me from dying several times over. It’ll be hard to give enough back, but I’ll still try.” He shut his eyes and exhaled. “Thank you, for all of it.”
Chuckling with a bit of a flush, Dalton dipped his head. “You’re welcome. And—” he slung his arms over Arthur and Charlotte’s shoulders— “you two are adorable together.”
Rosalind snorted. “Ace Wingman Dalton Tolbert back in the game, huh?”
Dalton clicked his tongue. “And nailing it.”
34
“Er, am I inconveniencing you?”
Once she was sure the monster was indeed dead, Charlotte removed her hand from the rifle. Although the stock was warm, most of the heat on her fingers was from Arthur, who had been holding her hand before she’d had to shoot. This hadn’t been the first time she’d hurried out of his grasp, either.
“Yup.” She stepped back over and took his hand.
He responded with a faint chuckle before they resumed walking.
The road wasn’t familiar at this point, but they weren’t far from Arthur’s house now. He hadn’t mentioned it, though, and she doubted either of them knew the path there, anyway. It wouldn’t hurt anyone if they just passed it.
“Charlotte?” he started after he freed his hands to take the next shot.
She glanced over at him as he pulled back on the arrow. “Yeah?”
“One moment.” He shot the infected and shuffled through his drawstring backpack. Inhaling as he grasped something, he pulled out a small paperback book and tossed it to her.
She caught it between her palms and spun it till it was upright. “What’s this?”
“My copy of Macbeth.” He put the shoulder strap back on and approached the dead infected. “Have the first two acts read by sunset. There will be a test tomorrow.” Kneeling and seizing the shaft, he turned back to face her. “I should at least be able to get you through the rest of the English courses you would have taken. I have no idea what we’re going to do for the other subjects, but we’ll figure something out.”
After a brief investigation of the book, she watched him clean off his arrow and walk back to her. Once he was in range, she seized him by the shoulders and kissed him.
She pulled away, leaving him to stagger a moment before he righted himself. With a grin, she took his hand and plowed forward as he tried to keep up.
~*~
Arthur had the last bit of rabbit meat in his mouth when Charlotte started, “Can we talk for a minute?”
Eyebrows raised, he chewed quickly and nodded.
Wiping grease off her fingers, she scanned the gas station. The building’s overhang barred the sunlight from their current spot. The metal picnic bench on which they sat wasn’t wobbling at the moment. An infected hobbled in the distance, but nothing threatening loomed in the vicinity.
She slipped her hand into his and let out a breath before looking him in the eye.
“I need to know why you insist it was your fault.”
He swallowed. “Only because it was.”
“It was not!” Squeezing his hand, she frowned. “Think about it. What if you saw me and didn’t shoot me?”
He rested his chin on his hand. “Then it would have saved quite a bit of your time.”
“Would you have still tried to come with me?”
“That would be likely.”
“And what would I have thought of you then?” She watched his face for a response before she continued. “To be honest, you already came off as enough of a stalker. If I hadn’t known—learned from experience—that you weren’t a bad guy, do you think I would have been okay with that? Do you think I would have let a strange man—no offens
e—follow me when I was traveling by myself? Heck, I could have ended up shooting you, and that wouldn’t have done either of us any favors—you being dead, and me heading towards Manfred’s village alone.”
Arthur swallowed, wiping his fingers on his leg. “But if you had gone earlier, he could have been elsewhere at the time. Maybe he never would have hurt you in the first place.”
“Maybe. But maybe not.” She interlaced her fingers. “On that train of thought, what else could have been different if I had taken the same path earlier? For all we know, I could have run into more people, and worse ones. All I can say for sure is we had delays, we made it to Hunt, and—and Blake died soon after. I have no idea how much of that would have changed if you had done something different. There’s no reason for you to shoulder all the blame.”
“Yes, there is.” He paused. “Rather, I don’t need a real, solid reason to feel bad. Why would emotions ever cooperate so well, eh?”
She squinted. “Did you just change your argument?”
“No.”
“Arthur.” She blew on his bangs until he looked back at her. “If you have a reason, tell me. This is something we need to talk about.”
Trying to somehow cross his arms without losing her hand, he hunched. “No, it isn’t. I, uh, don’t have a reason, anyway. As I said, emotions.”
She stared at him until he shrank back.
“Well, it won’t do you any good to know, it won’t do me any good to tell you, and it wouldn’t change anything or make anyone happier, so I’ll keep it to myself.” He squeezed her hand. “Okay?”
“That doesn’t sound okay to me.” She pressed her lips together. “How do you know it won’t help anything? Do we really need to keep secrets from each other about something this serious?”
He grunted.
“Hey.” She flicked him on the chin. “Don’t be like that.”
Mumbling, he leaned forward against the table. “If I were to tell you, it would ruin everything. You may be able to stand me now, but only because you don’t know, and I’m selfish enough to want to keep it that way.”
She shook her head with a sigh. “Is this about that ‘unforgivable deed’ of yours? You’re past it, Arthur, and I realize that. I may not approve of who you used to be, but what does it matter? You don’t approve, either. It’s something for us to agree on, right?” She stroked the back of his hand with her thumb. “It’ll be good for you to share it with someone, I promise. So why not me?”
He held his breath for a moment. “I don’t…”
“Don’t what?”
“I—” he cradled his forehead in one hand—”I don’t know. Ha. It’s only…” He sat back up, shaking his head.
She leaned against him. “Please?” She put her chin on his shoulder. “It’ll be fine, I promise.”
“Nngh.” He tilted his head until it touched hers. “May I repeat that you are not going to like it?”
“I understand. It’s okay. Go ahead.”
He swallowed as some obnoxious cicada grew louder by the second. “I… had only just started university here. I was still figuring out the place, still at the bottom of the food chain, all that. There… was this idiotic ‘get to know your classmates’ sports day thing to which I was more or less forced to show up. The, er, scheduled events went without incident, I suppose, but…”
He clenched a first and glared at the table. “When things were wrapping up, Jordan—one certain loudmouth student… He humiliated me.” He scrubbed at the ridges of the table with one finger. “Don’t ask for the details. They are not relevant. All you need to know is I—I was not happy about it, and so I decided to mortify him in return.
“I shadowed him a bit, and it took little time to determine he had an extreme fear of ghosts. He would deny it if anyone thought to ask, but I had no doubt that that phobia was the key to retaliating.” With a seething exhale, he jabbed a finger at the table. “And you realize the severity of what he did to me? I hadn’t expected to make many friends, but I had at least intended to go about my solitude with a smidgen of dignity. And he ripped that away from me just to make his dim self look wittier.”
Reaching across, she pressed on his fidgeting hand until he stopped rubbing the table. “Okay. You weren’t doing any of this for fun.” She made a quiet shooshing sound until he exhaled, shoulders less rigid.
“All right.” He glanced around to make sure no one was closing in on them. “After I confirmed that he could not, in fact, see an ordinary ghost if it walked straight through him, I decided to find a way to make him see. It took quite some time of hunting—not to mention I was still attempting to get through classes and everything else. But, in the middle of November, I finally—” he swallowed—”found a spell that looked promising.”
At that point he paused, turning his head to look at her. She immediately blinked and relaxed her eyebrows, but he had already seen the disbelief on her face.
“What?” he said, hunching his shoulders. “You seem skeptical.”
“Ah—sorry.” She tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear. “I am listening, no matter what. This is kind of a weird idea to me, but it’s serious to you, so go ahead.”
“Right.” He sighed, turning back to the table’s surface. “You have plenty of reasons to think I’m mad, but this is a true account of things. There are spells. I wish dearly that there weren’t, but… that’s not something I can change.
“So, I—I had found something that was supposed to make spirits tangible, from what I understood of it. I got everything prepared and headed out to test the spell. The fountain on campus, in the middle of the night, seemed like a good test spot; no one else would have been there. After a few false starts, I managed to follow the directions through, and…”
He put a hand to his forehead to lean on it. “I don't know what precisely I was expecting to appear—the traditional floating white sheet, or some such brightly glowing thing—but you can probably guess what I got instead." His gaze drifted up to the infected in the distance. “I ended up with a rambling one like the zombies we have these days. A manner of taking over the closest empty vessel, I suppose.
“It had wandered away before I thought to kill it. I didn’t have any weapons on me, and I hesitated long enough for him to find another student—I forget his name. He was passed out on a bench a few streets away. He screamed blue murder when he got bitten, though.”
He exhaled for a moment but didn’t resume speaking. After a minute, she tapped her fingers on the back of his hand.
“So that’s how it started?” she asked slowly. “All of it?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “I—” his voice was strangled—”I didn’t intend—I just—Perhaps I still w-wasn’t justified, but—”
“Arthur, shh.” She tucked her arm under his and squeezed his hand. “Slow down. Can we think about it a little more?”
His gaze slid over to her. “What do you mean?”
“Well…” She watched an ant zigzag across the table before looking him in the eye. “Firstly, November was months before the first case was reported. Don’t you think a ‘zombie’ would have been spotted earlier if the plague had started then?”
He nodded. “I don’t know exactly how it worked, but it looks like it spread for a while without affecting anyone.”
“Okay, then how would you know where it started—and that you started it—if you don’t know how it spread?”
“But I saw it start. The one I created was just like the ones out here now.”
She exhaled. “I hate to ask, but are you sure?” She twirled a strand of hair around her finger. “I mean, the first case of the virus was all the way in Singapore, right? But you’re saying it started right around here.”
He pressed his palm down on the table’s surface. “The first death was in Singapore. Which, coincidentally, was that student’s country of origin and where he went between terms.” His jaw clenched. “As I said, I don’t know how it spread or why it took a certain am
ount of time before it started turning people. The only thing of which I am certain is that I created the first one. I started this, for the most idiotic of reasons, and—and when I say that your brother is dead because of me, I mean it!”
Quivering, he lowered his head. “If I could go back and change it, I would. If I could go back and—and strangle myself before I did it, I would. But all I can do is go on surviving as I kill more and more people. Sometimes with the plague, sometimes with my own hands.” Choking, he covered his mouth. “And perhaps I didn’t shoot Blake, and perhaps I didn’t kill him by dragging you down, but his death is still my fault. He wouldn’t have been injured and unable to get proper medical care if it weren’t for me. He wouldn’t have had to watch his friends die if it weren’t for me. And you—you w-wouldn’t have had to… go through any of this… N-no one would have…”
She finally let go of his hand so she could hug him. “Hey—Hey. Take a deep breath. Okay? Try to calm down. It’s okay.”
“What do you mean, ‘it’s okay’?” he cried, struggling to break free of her. “Me killing everyone—how is that okay?”
“It wouldn’t be, but…” She sighed, pulling his arm over her shoulders. “Let’s listen to what you’re saying, all right?” Her voice was soft. “It would make some sense, but… magic? It’s not that you’re crazy and I can’t believe anything you say, but I don’t want you shouldering something like this if there’s a chance you’re wrong.”
He was silent for a moment. “Of course you wouldn’t believe me. Not even you… Not even you.”
He stared at his fists before standing abruptly. “Because my own crazed word isn’t enough, eh? You want some proof? You already know what happened. You already saw it spread. What more—”
Cutting off, he broke his gaze and looked out at the street for a moment.
She took a deep breath. “I—”
He took off running. With a yelp, she scrambled to her feet, but he had already come to a stop in front of the infected.
Along the Winding Road Page 26
